URC Daily Devotion 2 May 2026
Selected verses from Judges 15:1 – 8, 18-20; 16: 1-3
After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, bringing along a kid. He said, ‘I want to go into my wife’s room.’ But her father would not allow him to go in. Her father said, ‘I was sure that you had rejected her; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister prettier than she? Why not take her instead?’ Samson said to them, ‘This time, when I do mischief to the Philistines, I will be without blame.’ So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took some torches; and he turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. When he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves. Then the Philistines asked, ‘Who has done this?’ And they said, ‘Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken Samson’s wife and given her to his companion.’ So the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father. Samson said to them, ‘If this is what you do, I swear I will not stop until I have taken revenge on you.’ He struck them down hip and thigh with great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam…By then he was very thirsty, and he called on the Lord, saying, ‘You have granted this great victory by the hand of your servant. Am I now to die of thirst, and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?’ So God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came from it. When he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore it was named En-hakkore, which is at Lehi to this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for twenty years…Once Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went in to her. The Gazites were told, ‘Samson has come here.’ So they encircled the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, thinking, ‘Let us wait until the light of the morning; then we will kill him.’ But Samson lay only until midnight. Then at midnight he rose up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.
Reflection
More unedifying stories about Samson. He returns to Timnah to reclaim his ‘wife’. Her father says he’s given her in marriage elsewhere and instead offers him her prettier, younger, sister(!!). Samson reacts by going on a rampage, cruelly abusing animals in the process, destroying the entire Philistine harvest. The Philistines vent their fury against the hapless woman and her father at the centre of this horrific folktale, burning them to death. Samson responds in revenge, slaughtering many Philistines.
This isn’t about justice; its barbarism at its worst, showing total disregard for animals, people and the environment. There is no suggestion that this behaviour aligns with God’s plan to deliver Israel from oppression and bring rest to the land.
Verses 9-17 (omitted from our reading) escalate events involving Judah, whose attempts to restrain Samson and hand him over to the Philistines (submitting to their oppressors) result in more carnage. Samson again displays divinely inspired physical strength to break free and the outcome is interpreted to explain the name of a geographical feature.
For the first time (v.18) Samson calls on God; but only to demand that God satisfies his thirst. This is another place-naming story that concludes by suggesting this period of chaos has lasted 20 years.
Chapter 16 begins a new saga of Samson and a prostitute in Gaza, another Philistine city, whose citizens plan to kill him at daybreak, the time they expect him to leave. He outwits then by leaving at midnight; but the story focuses on the extraordinary physical power Samson displays in destroying and carrying away the entire city-gate structure.
Thus far all the stories of Samson have suggested a mythic, feral, giant of a man, akin to the Greek hero, Hercules, not a nazirite devoted to God. They’re seldom read in churches; but are part of scriptural tradition. Does Samson prompt us to acknowledge our baser nature, or personify the things we fear? Many times Jesus said ‘Do not be afraid’; so let’s humbly put our trust in God.
Prayer
Transcendent God,
we believe that you love us and desire to save us
from ourselves and from our fears.
Save us from turning mythic, or real-life, hell-raisers
into heroic figures in our story-telling.
Help us increase our trust in you
and focus on telling your story
of justice, love and peace, as revealed in Jesus Christ,
who is truly able to deliver all your people
from sin and evil. Amen.